Gaston Bonfils, Haystacks in a Harvest Field, Signed Oil on Panel, Double-Sided with a Spring Orchard, 19th Century, Framed

Five stooks of cut wheat stand in a stubble field in full August light, their sides catching the sun and their shadows falling long and violet across the ground. Behind them a dark wall of trees closes the field, and the sky is banked with cloud.

Oil on wood panel, 9 x 13 inches (23 x 33 cm), 15 x 19 inches (38 x 48 cm) framed, signed lower left G. Bonfils, French School, circa 1870-1900, in a carved frame with a dark band and gilt inner moulding.

The panel is painted on both sides. The reverse carries a spring orchard, an apple tree in white blossom in the foreground, a poplar rising behind it, and a woman in dark clothes crossing the grass with a basket. Painted wet and quickly, it is the work of a man using the panel he had to hand rather than a picture made to sell.

On the harvest side the paint is dry and worked short. The stooks are built from vertical strokes of straw, cream and pink laid one against the next, and the shadows between them are put in with blue and violet rather than brown. The stubble is scraped in horizontal drags that let the panel show through. It is a plein air way of working, done in front of the field.

A printed notice from an artists' dictionary is fixed to the reverse. It records Bonfils as born at Menton, a pupil of Auguste and Leon Glaize, exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1878 and a member of that society, and one of the founders of the Salon d'Hiver in 1897.

The frame is carved, with a dark outer band between two gilt mouldings.

The panel is sound and the paint surface intact. There are small open gaps at the joints of the frame.